Posted October 19, 2004; 02:25 p.m.

by quinones

Afghanistan held its first popular presidential election Oct. 9, and current interim leader Hamid Karzai holds a substantial lead as the votes are being counted. Karzai was chosen as interim leader of the war-torn nation in December 2001.

Panelists will include Said Tayeb Jawad, the Afghan ambassador to the United States; Robert Finn, former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and currently a visiting professor at Princeton; Michael Schmunk, a former German envoy to Afghanistan and now visiting diplomat in residence at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin; and Mufit Ozdes, former Turkish ambassador to Afghanistan.

The panel will be chaired by Wolfgang Danspeckgruber, director of the University's
Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination
, which is sponsoring the event along with the Department of Near Eastern Studies and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.